Monday, April 6, 2009

Waiting for the 20% Fairy

Good morning. I'm Bob and I worked, lived, breathed, and ate the Silicon Valley with the black family-o during the mid-90's. All the eating occurred at their house because bpo was a pain-in-the-arse about coming over our house - he has his peculiarities about feeling comfortable, as you know. They were like family to us.

I live in the Raleigh/Durham/Chapel Hill - aka Triangle - area of North Carolina. I've been thinking hard and sincerely this past week about its 80%-isms, as bpo had asked. I used to complain that THEY didn't have imported Mozzarella di Bufala that wasn't spoiled by the time it got to the store, but now I can find it at Costco and it tastes surprisingly fresh. I used to complain that THEY didn't have good Italian bread, and we still don't in the traditional sense, but we have Italian-like breads that taste better than Italian bread. I used to complain that THEY need to get some serious computer companies in our area, but we now have companies like Red Hat (headquarters are here), Nvidia, Cisco, and Netapp.

I didn't have anything to do with bringing these things to our area. They were all accomplished - apparently - by the 20% Fairy. She flies around at night looking for high-tech areas of the world where people are whining about how things suck, and she makes stuff happen. It's magic. Thank goodness we have her on our side.

Then I got to thinking about my own accomplishments of late. I'd say I'm operating at about 50% right now. I have installed only 4 of my 8 Dolby 7.1 speakers. I have not finished the plan to build the golf hole in my backyard, so our yard continues to look like a garbage dump. My diet keeps getting interrupted by - uhh - pigging out. I told my youngest that we need to spend a little time every day building the robot, but we haven't touched it in over a week. I have this pet project at work that will change the world, but I haven't picked that up in a week and a half. Where is the Code Fairy when I need her most? THEY should have more code fairies.